Category Archives: Recipes

I thought that after my food plan of the week, I would post my recipe on congee. It’s not one that has a lot of ingredients or in any way complicated so you can always give it a go 🙂

As I mentioned in a previous post, this dish is popular throughout the Asian continent and is known by many different names. It is essentially, depending on your personal tastes, a thick rice porridge or quite a thin rice soup. I prefer mine a little wetter and I usually pair this with thin beef slices (no visible fat) or with turkey mince stuffed bitter melon and my homemade black bean sauce (another recipe perhaps?). Another popular variant of this is “Eight Treasure Congee” which is full of different beans and grains and known for cooling the body in hot Summer months.

This dish is perfect if you need a bit of a winter warmer or you’ve had some stomach upset and not feeling up to a heavy meal.

Ingredients:

a cup of jasmine rice (you could use brown as a healthier alternative or mixed grains such as quinoa, barley, red/green/black beans)

around a litre of chicken or veg stock (or 2 oxo cubes and around a litre of water)

3 tbsp of preserved cabbage. I used a Chinese Tianjin preserved cabbage which can be found at any Chinese supermarket

First boil some water and mix with your stock cube/jelly (or if you have chicken stock ready made up, add it later)

Put in the cup of rice in a sauce pan, preferably with a lid.

Add the ginger and stock to the rice and put on a high heat, stirring regularly so the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom

4. In a small bowl, put your preserved cabbage in and use some boiling water to rinse the cabbage so it isn’t too salty

5. Add the drained preserved cabbage to the mix (and any other optional ingredients that take a long time to cook such as grains and pulses) and simmer on a gentle heat for around 30 minutes with the lid on.

6. Add more water if necessary and some salt to taste.

7. Add any optional ingredients such as meat slices and tofu and let simmer for a further fifteen minutes (with the lid off if the mix is too liquid for your liking).

8. At this point the rice grains should have broken down and you have a consistency of thick gruel or watery porridge (depending on your preference). If you are using beans/pulses you may need a further 15-30 minutes. Traditionally, this can be cooked on a low heat for a few hours. Stir in the spring onions and allow to warm for a minute or so and your congee is ready.

This is the preserved cabbage that I picked up from my local Chinese supermarket.

How it looks inside:

After rinsing:

I really do love this dish, especially when I’m ill or I need a dish to warm my soul. If you do try this dish, please leave a comment below and let me know how you found it. I’m pretty sure this is free on Slimming World if you are on the extra easy plan as it doesn’t contain any synned ingredients but I’m not 100% sure. I am not synning this dish on my own food plan.